An Arrow Let Loose
by greywitch135
Summary: REDONE Sequel to Curse of the Danaides,what happens when the God of love gets hit by one of his own arrows, I HAVE REDONE THIS STORY, NOT THE SAME!
1. The Beginning of My Beginning

_HI EVERYONE, AM RE-DOING THIS STORY, HAD SOME SERIOUS CREATIVE PROBLEMS WHEN I WAS TRYING TO FIND MY "VOICE" FOR PSYCHE, AND AS ONE VERY TRUTHFUL READER SAID, SHE SOUNDED STUCK-UP. I HOPE SHE SOUNDS A LITTLE MORE LIKEABLE AFTER I'VE FINISHED WITH HER. THANK-YOU, THIS CHAPTER IS SIMILAR TO THE FIRST OF THE OLD ONE, BUT NOT THE SAME, AND THE REST WITH BE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!!!_

_Yes, love indeed is light from heaven,  
A spark of that immortal fire,  
With angels shar'd, by Allah given  
To lift from earth our low desire. _

--- By _George Gordon Byron _

My story was to begin like so many others, with a man, what else could cause such destruction, such violence, in the midst of beauty? Most desecration and violation man that a man was involved, but this man was a God with a face so beautiful that mortal eyes cannot possibly look upon it, else we would be instantly blinded and would therefore stumble about blundering off a cliff or into a bottomless lake, or to put it plainly, into something out of mortal hands all together. I included myself in that "we" mistakenly, I am no mortal girl, I used to be, but I am not anymore. Old habits die hard, old words that I used to use to curse with, I use even now, even though I can constantly informed by the one person who should take his own advice before preaching to me, that it is unseemly for a Goddess to swear! I will not repeat to you what I told that particularly annoying God. Even now I wake, thinking myself back in my old life with my sisters, and the King, their father. In beauty shall I begin this story, and in violation must I continue for this is not only the start of my tale, but the start of my life also, in a land lost to myth… to legend… to be gone forever.

The sun beat down on her slender, young body, shoulders kissed to a soft honey brown, exposed to the loving touch of a sun that was much enamoured by her, the eyes reflecting pools of a calm serene light blue, the face so beautiful and both unlike and alike my own. Her name was truly fitting for Aglaia means beauty and splendour. Her hair streaming behind her, blown and teased by the wind, as golden as light, aglow with innocence, lips paused in a smile full of promise, full of youth, full of an innocence about to be taken.

She was not the most clever of girls, she had never needed to be. Her sweet nature and smile were more powerful than her mind. A girl like so many that he had had before, she was not the first he had taken, and she would never be the last, not while he had breathe in his body, but he had an existence with no end and life time stretched out ahead of him, pleasure with mortals such as this one, ripe for picking.

She ran, heels dancing on the floor, through orchards whose shadows covered her, rippling over her body, her large white robe hung on her slim frame, at to protect her from him, but she did not care for the world was hers for the asking since youth lived in her and loved her well, this girl was but ten and six years old if that, perfect for marriage and perfect for what he had in mind.

From the heavens he looked down on her, and from shadows he was made flesh, behind her he watched, as she sank down, knee deep in flowers, for she was not a tall girl, uttering soft cries of delight and pleasure as she filled her hands with them, those flowers were not natural, he had created them for her, for her delight. Ropes of them, colours gay and brilliant, made her splendour vivid and unnatural in the gleaming light of mid-day, they crowned her, trailing from her limp and contented fingers. Seated on the floor, amongst the hot, melting magnificence of that summer day, she resembled a nymph, some enchanting creature of nature, that beguiled both his mind and his senses, so that only the shape of her, the smell, the sound of her voice remained.

Sometimes girls offered themselves, glad for him to use them as he felt fit, glad for the opportunity to be great, to be, for however short the time… his, and, if I can be cheeky for a moment, make no mistake readers that the time was short when spent with him. Others he had to take forcefully, but what did they matter after he was finished with them, he was both King and God, what he needed, he took and paid no attention to the consequences, he ruled over his wretched land, these puny mortals, they were rightfully his for the taking, and this girl, this mortal beauty, was no exception.

He came up behind her, and somehow sensing the danger evident in the air, she rose to her feet, and bare-footed, she raced through the flowers that fell and were crushed to the ground under her, she fled from him. Hair flooding down her face, covering her eyes, desperation filling her as she realised that nothing would save her, she could do nothing for wherever she turned, he was there, wherever she ran, he followed, and when she hit out, fear and horror spreading through her, in a last act of defiance, he darted out of the way, the chase was what he enjoyed almost as much as the final deed. His strong, tall body overpowering her smaller, weaker frame, hair framed by the sun and twice as gold, eyes as deep and as blue as the sky, an angel with evil intent in his heart, he blinded her, and in her panic hit out at him, he grew angry and lazily backhanded her. How vain her efforts were, I mean, she was faced against a man who controlled the very thunder, whose toys were lightening bolts, who made the earth quake and crumble with his anger, with his wrath. Unless she was his wife, she could do nothing against him.

Beneath him she shivered for it seemed that all the light and warmth had fled from the day, as he violently subdued her, and on the grass still covered by the blossoms that had once given her so much pleasure, he had her, her blood staining the voluminous white shift that she wore, seeping through slowly to streak the dirt with a soft red, unconsciousness turning reality into a dream, something that could have been passed off as a nightmare if I had not, at that very moment, been conveniently conceived.

Tear smudged her face, bruised from her struggles to free herself. A breeze blew over them, unnatural in its coldness and in the warmth of the day, it did not worry him not for he knew what it meant and who it was.

Leaning over the girl he had ruined, he said,

"Wife, must you watch me, I know you gain some… pleasure from peeping at us and putting that nosey ear of yours up against doors, but you know it is rather awkward sometimes, with you staring at us, I never feel as if my performance is up to scratch."

His wife had followed him, she knew where he had gone to, she knew where he interest had fallen this time, she knew everything he felt and everything that he did, bonds between husbands and wives meant that every time he strayed from her she felt it, she felt pain, she felt her heart hurt. She had watched him, with a few tears that had slipped out of her eyes, she hated herself for them, hated herself for still feeling like this, every time that it happened. Anger filled her and a spark fell from her clenched hands, giving her the courage to speak to him as she quite rightly demeaned man's most important thing, and the one thing he was probably the most sensitive about.

"Whatever pleasure you gave me was gone and done with as soon as it had arrived and even that was a long time ago. You simply are not up for the job of pleasing a real woman."

"Look at her then, look at compare her to yourself, and then wonder why I chose her, why I put them over you."

With that he vanished, as if he had never been there at all, leaving behind only a bleeding, broken girl in his path of devastation, and his "real woman". Hera pursed her lips, biting them as if the second pain would overcome the pain in her heart, and then looked at the girl, jealousy and bitterness making her seem weary, envy radiating off her body, hazel eyes narrowed and shooting venomous looks back to where his body had disappeared from, if he had stayed a moment longer she would have shown him what pain truly was. Even though she knew her own beauty, her long chestnut curls, her eyes, her tall, graceful figure, she knew how lovely she herself was, but placed next to that girl, she paled considerably in the girl's shine. I am nothing, she thought, when compared to her I might as well be a mortal, take no offence at her thoughts readers, I was mortal once, but trust me, I am not as arrogant as older Goddesses.

But her eyes took in her bruises; the blood matted up in her long golden hair, then tentatively reached out a hand, then drew it back as if afraid of what she might find, before touching the girl's face gently, the mother in her taking control and over riding other qualms. She flinched.

"Zeus, you monster, she was but an innocent… what had she ever done to deserve this"

She pondered a while, thinking of why she had ever married that man, her husband, Zeus, why she had ever joined her life to his. It had brought her nothing but heartache and no advantages at all, no pleasure, nothing but constant pain. But then she thought of her children and how much she loved them, the pain was worth it for them.

"You forced her you wretched God… look what you did to her, she must had fought back."

Her long thin finger ran carefully over cuts, over the marks only now beginning to show up, then reached the girl's stomach and drew her hand back so sharply you would have thought that the girl had scalded her.

"Pregnant too… she bears your child. You brute… you hideous thing of evil."

This girl she would allow to live, even so soon she could tell a woman who was with child a mile off, there was a baby inside of her. His baby… what was to become of it?

"Look at how beautiful she is… how lovely your child will be, both of you so bright, so divine, she will have a baby girl. The child would be even more beautiful than ours are… our children would pale before her surely, what with you and this girl as her parents… what would our children do then? What would become of them?"

It was then, in the heat of an anger still inside of her, in pain and in despair, she made her decision rashly. This child could not be allowed to bear Zeus' blood, bear his genes, fortunately for her, yet not for me, there was a little time left for her to alter that, to make sure that this child never grew to be immortal, to be divine, to be more brilliant than her own children. She knew exactly what to do to make sure that never happened.

She laid her hands on the girl's forehead and with a whisper, all of her aches, all of her bruises and blood and cuts were gone, dissolved away with the splash of an immortal's tear on her cheeks.

"This is not your fault little girl, but I cannot allow this to continue… Zeus will never know this child as his and your baby girl will never be his, I will purge his blood, his being from this baby, and it will be like a virgin birth for she will never have a father… I cannot allow this to happen… to continue…"

Then she sat next to her, kneeling besides her as she wove her spell, one to purge the baby of her father's genes, the second to make sure that this baby did not grow to be as lovely as her mother, did not grow to outshine Hera's own children. The first glow of red settled on the girl whilst Hera mumbled words that she had had to say so many times before, covering her form like a glove, moving Zeus out of her body and out of her unborn daughter's, a sigh flowing through the trees as a soft white mist floated above the girl before being blown away on the wind that carried an echo of a baby's cry. The second glow flowed through Hera's fingers as she wove it, as she chanted the words that would curse the baby.

"_Your beauty famed is a simple disguise_

_Beholden only through mortal eyes,_

_For inside of you a baby lies._

_Ghostly white, no hint of colour_

_Until she finds her heart's true lover._

_Break her heart, wreck her soul,_

_Without him she can never be whole._

_Sometime she will know my pain,_

_With this her colour returns again._

_I am sorry butterfly, but this must be done" _.

Into the moving shadows, she vanished too, the sunlight carrying away her body and leaving the girl there, alone to wake from her sleep, to stagger dazed out of the beautiful hollow, to wander faintly for some time, wondering as her head spun whether it had been a vivid and almost real dream, or whether what had happened to her had been real. She did not look back to see the blood on the ground, as she stumbled home, lurching about and swaying, she fell to the floor in a faint, only to have her servants find her and carry her back indoors, to strip off her clothes, to search for marks that had caused so much blood. But they found none, and after a while she thought that it had been a dream, a horrible nightmare, something she had imagined, a dream cursed by the Gods. She knew though, when her blood never came that month or the months following it, when she was sick in the morning, that it had been no nightmare, it had happened, and she had proof of a child to show for it.

Upon seeing her stomach grow, her father threw her out, what father wants a daughter who cannot marry, who was tainted now by another, she was useless to him, no man would ever want to marry her. But a King wanted a wife, and she was still beautiful enough, to bewitch and ensnare him. He would see her and want her and that would be enough to turn his mind from other woman and for him to marry her. For a month she travelled to his land and before him she paraded, half naked and still so very beautiful. He never thought, until it was too late, about her pregnancy, until some one commented on it, and commended his virility, a wife with child and them not even married a month, her beauty that had so tangled up his mind faded and his senses cleared and he saw what he had ignored for so long. Of course it was rather a little too late for they were already wed, and he loved her. Everyone else thought that the child was his, and that the beautiful girl who had appeared from nowhere had been his mistress, I mean, no girl would ever dare to marry the King while pregnant with another's child, they never questioned it, or shall I say, most never questioned it. I was brought up as his eldest child, though our only connection was through his tentative care of me, his love of my mother, and our joint adoration of my beautifully flawed younger sisters.

I was a constant reminder of the man who had raped her, forever he searched for a sign of the man who had did it, searched in my face and in my character for it, searched futilely for there was no trace of him in me, but as if anyone would know if there had been any, none knew who my father had been, and the man who I called father might as well as searched for Aphrodite herself in my face.

As for my mother, well… if she ignored me, she could pretend that it had never happened to her, that she only had two daughters; that I was invisible, she never wanted to see me and she never wanted to know me, I was cursed after all, few wanted to make my acquaintance. Two other daughters my mother gave life to, and they were simply tiny miniatures of her, Thalia, which means blooming and luxuriant, and Euphrosyne, which means joy and merriment, such beautiful names for such beautiful girls, and I loved them, in my own way, and I suppose they loved me in theirs. I will tell you what became of me… the ghost child… the soul of a God's heart…


	2. The Party from Hell

I was small for my age, and I hated it. It meant, like what was happening to me now, that people mistook me for my youngest sister, never the older one when she stood a head above Euphrosyne, and more than head and shoulders above me, but always the youngest. I could have understood it if the rumours had not been what they were, "ghost child," "white princess", and if my antics and tricks had not made me infamous. The king had a devil for a eldest daughter it was said, often I wondered whether those people spoke true. When they were politely and gently informed of their mistake, as my little sister looked on, horror struck that her golden beauty had yet again been mistaken for my white ugliness. The looks on their faces would be enough to show exactly what they thought of the thin, small, young, ugly white child standing in front of them, that everyone believed to be the Goddess Aphrodite incarnate. Well… I can tell you that this man in front of me would no longer be offering his prayer to me!

"So sorry my lady, your beauty is told over the land, and I am struck by it. Forgive me." I grimaced at the creep, and hastily covered a disbelieving snort with a cough; the man was talking to me!

My little sister, jealous of the attention shown to me looked around for our other sister, Thalia, who was dancing and laughing, and receiving the attention that she wanted. Both turned their backs to me, Euphrosyne smiled at the man and continued to talk with the creep.

"Is not my beauty renowned also?"

I moved away from them and towards my father, hoping to beg his permission to escape from the party. Since I was thirteen, my life had been like this, for three of the most boring and useless years. Telling my father that when he allowed me out into formal occasions without them, he favoured me above them, my two sisters pleaded their way into escorting me everywhere, I nearly told that they would have the parties, the dull and lifeless men, the boring conversation, they would have fainted from shock if I had though.

"Sir…" I whispered in his ear. He stood up and excused himself from the people about him, growled at me and led me from the room angrily.

"Might I not leave now? It is nearly finished and I am weary of talking to men who think me Euphrosyne. It is more than irritating."

"How am I ever going to find you a husband when you insist on being so unsociable and uncooperative? Do you not want to be married?" As if any girl in her right mind would! "Am I to give my throne to a dead line?? You are my eldest daughter, what must I do?"

That was an extremely good question, I liked children, I wanted a family, I simply was not so keen on having the required husband. I am not, readers, as innocent as to believe that I could have one without the other, it was just that finding the other in the crowd of fools who insisted on asking me to prove that I was her Lady Aphrodite, seemed a little bit more than impossible at the moment. The things they asked me to do! It was shocking, and would have horrified the Goddess of love herself! Besides that, Hypermnestra had married when she was six and twenty, and great deal older than a sixteen year old girl, she knew how to handle Lynceus, and make him do what she wanted, I did not see why I could not do the same, rather than giving up my freedom to then next idiot that asked me what things I did to relieve the stress of making people fall in love. I nearly replied to that one by telling the man I took out a knife and killed people.

"I want a family father, I am just a little unsure about the husband part though." I offered up to him hopefully. He looked as if he was going to laugh for a moment, but no, father never laughed at me or at the things that I did.

"How are you going to provide yourself with children, wench, without having a husband first? Foolish girl, get out of my sight, dance first with your sisters, then go before you say something even more foolish than that."

I very nearly told him exactly how I could have children without a husband, and walked away smiling to myself while he pondered female follies. I am mischievous I know, and a little spoilt, but I could help neither one of those character traits.

Father wanted a husband for me more than ever since that day in Argos, not only were men either too scared to touch the Goddess Aphrodite, or much to eager to do so, they neither wanted their children to end up like her, nor wanted retribution for marrying a Goddess, a sacred immortal. He also wanted to dispel rumours of me marrying a monster who would control his lands after him, personally I do not think it would have made that much of a difference, but I never told him that!

I collected my sisters and we moved together to the centre of the room, where low tables had been cleared for us, and a musician in the corner nodded at me. I wore white; the name "ghost" was more than appropriate at this moment. Colours made my sisters jealous, they might always be brighter and more brilliant than the ones my sisters wore, they had been both fiercely jealous and almost affectionate towards me for years. I would say it began when I was six, and a prophecy marked me out as destined to spend the rest of my days with a monster who would probably feel like eating me for one of his snacks, it made me different to them, and that they could not handle. They would, if you could believe it readers, say that the attention I received was attention that they wanted and did not have. It was my father's fault, he had spoilt them.

Being smaller it was somewhat easier to dance, my head was closer to my feet, I loved moving with the music, in the beginning we were tentative, both my sisters watching me for confirmation that they were doing it right. I nodded at them slightly and all three of us let ourselves go.

I danced for no one and as if none watched me, my middle sister was confident now and glowing, she loved it and danced for all the men in the room who were currently drooling after her, she had a whole line of men that were, at the moment, asking father for his permission to marry her, mother looked on proudly at them. My littlest sister smiled sweetly and winked occasionally at a few younger men. She too would not be a maiden for much longer. This was what my father wanted for me, and I for one could not see the appeal in parading in front of men like cattle, waiting for the highest bidder. Despite my grace and dainty and delicate wit, I was sure that my highest bidder would not be attending tonight's party, and that however much he paid for me, it would be considerably lower that the price of Euphrosyne and Thalia.

When it came to dancing, I was the best; I almost felt the music as it swirled about me, and so it meant that I moved with it and not to it. Yet another thing for them to be jealous of me for. My veil that failed to hide anything moved when my head moved and I counted two rips that I prayed no one else, especially my father could see. They must have happened when I had walked down from my rooms, curses! Father had seen them and was scowling at me again. I did a back flip and two cartwheel, my sisters following with equally graceful, although less spectacular moves.

The walls, covered in tapestries spun, and music stopped and started somewhere in time with our dance, when I could not tell you and what it was I never knew, all I knew was movement and action, I never paused long enough to listen to the music. My sisters linked their hands together and I leapt onto them as they pushed me up into the air where I spun, twirled, and rolled, deliciously weightless. The music ended and so did our dance. I breathed heavily, panting, I still loved to dance.

Other people joined in dancing now, most keeping their distance, and only fools keeping too close, I could have sent hell fire, or heaven light at them, most never made up their mind, demon or angel, most remained undecided and therefore cautious. I myself felt like a butterfly, flitting about in a breeze and dancing, flighty and quick, until my gown tripped me up in its ridiculous length, I swear father thought that if people saw less of my white skin then it would not exist. I am sure that that was the philosophy he had applied to my clothes.

"Wait," the man himself roared, then smiled graciously, gesturing to myself and my sisters to come to him, "My daughters, beautiful, graceful and delicate females." It was a shame that that description was applied to me; it made the lack of some of those virtues very obvious. We bowed and the crowd clapped and cheered us, then went back to dancing as if they had never been interrupted.

"Wait," again the host and king paused the frivolity, and stretched out an arm to his wife, my mother; she took his hand and was drawn closer to him, "My beautiful wife and hostess." Again the crowd dutifully clapped and cheered while mother smiled shyly with pleasure. She was everything that I should have been, and everything father wanted me to be, demure, quiet, beautiful, something that I would never manage to appear as, and she was never clever. I had been educated with my sisters until the age of eleven when we were supposed to have been handed over to mother, who no doubt, would have politely tried to ignore my undeniable presence in her rooms and quite possibly my very existence in her life.

But, my tutor objected and asked father if he could have a few more years with me, to; as he put it, turn my mindless folly into a brain worthy to run a kingdom. I had no objections, mother certainly could see no reason why I could not avoid her even more that usual. It was father who worried that such an education would not only change me from a girl into a sort of mannish-female, but also make me undesirably un-marriageable. I mean, nymphs and sphinxes, who like a girl who can tell her husband when he is wrong, why exactly he is wrong, and can tell him the right answer also! Apparently no one.

I persuade father though by telling him that the education would help me to recognise the monster that I was apparently betrothed to, and while I almost told him that I, tiny and weak as I am, would kill it, I quickly changed that sentence to then I would tell some one else to kill it for me, and thus avoid marrying the thing and having it rule father's lands. It was not surprising that he agreed after that, on the basis that if he thought that I was turning into a man, then the lesson would stop. I failed to tell him that Psyche, a girl, reputed to be a Goddess, however talented would find it extremely impossible and distasteful to turn into a man, who would want to after all?

But, going back to the subject that I have wandered off, my mother is the one person that everyone thinks that I should be like, and the ideal of a wife, mother and female that I will never be able to copy. My sister though, save for their cheekiness and occasional spirit, are well ont heir way to being exactly like her.

A creepy, old, bald man watched me as I danced a little, it made me wonder precisely what the riddle Hypermnestra had told me meant. I mean "monster" could be so many things, he could be the monster for all I knew. "More powerful that Zeus" could be a bad thing, Zeus was a lecherous snake, something with more power was bound to be twice as bad, an old perverted, rotten letch, exactly the description of the man staring at me at the moment, brilliant! I kept as far away from that man as I could, I mean why tempt the Fates? They plague me enough as it is. His stare unnerved me so much that I made a quick exit, father glaring as I did so.

I ran down the court yard, past a few trees to my set of rooms, twirling and spinning until the floor moved beneath me and I had to sit down to steady myself. The stars zoomed above my head and I said a silent prayer to Artemis that wherever Greer was, she was one of those stars looking down on me. I refused to say any sort of prayer to Eros, knowing my luck, and his memories of my kicking him, he would probably make me fall in love with the horrid old man from the party.

Voice from the front gate made my heart heavy, as they begged for Aphrodite incarnate to take away their pain and suffering, how could I tell them that the mortal girl could do nothing?

I slipped back into the house and into a busy kitchen when the cook caught my eyes and gestured to a basket at the beck of the room. He knew what I did with it, he softly as I past him by, "Gods keep you white princess". Picking up the basket I raced out before anyone else could see and recognise me and walked to the gate, passing the basket to the guards, who I knew would distribute it to the people.

"Bless you my white lady." Was all the response I received as I slipped back to my rooms and to my bed. Memories of the people who had followed us from Argos fileld me, some with dead children, begging for me to raised them to life, others thin and dying asking for my help. I have never forgotten them and I wish that I could have helped them then as I try to do now. However sweet and blissful sleep is, I never forget.

2, 486 words, sorry, not that much, but I promise more later on, what do you think, better than the last or worse!!!!!


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